when nothing starts
by bells-mannequin
Summary: Of course he knows how to serenade a girl. — Ayane: on friendship, love and Miura Kento. Spoilers for chapter 60 and 61.


** notes**_:_ I love when my pairing antenna is right.

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**when nothing starts  
**_and you don't want it to end**  
**_

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Miura Kento is smitten with her.

It's not as if he would hide it or anything. He doesn't boast loudly (like Pin would) or blush furiously (like Kazehaya would)—but he shows it, subtly.

_Do you know why I kept glancing at you?_

Of course he knows how to serenade a girl. He smiles the right way and says the right things in the right tone and—he just does it very well, but that's to be expected with a guy like him.  
She's good with things like that (recognising romance, or blooming feelings). It's her passion, you could say. She loves love for the sake of itself, because it's the most wonderful and beautiful emotion in the world. She likes to look at Chizu and Ryu, or scheme about Kazehaya and Sawako. She likes the happiness that comes with successfully coupling two people who deserve each other. She likes romance.

She knows pureness when she sees it, she sees goodness and faith and love in every movement of her best friends. She believes that there will be a happy ending for them.

.

That doesn't mean, though, that Ayane is disillusioned. Love can only touch her with her friends' smiles, or Pin's stupid jokes, or Nii-chan's cooking, or Tou-chan's embrace. And it's enough. She accepts this and takes all the love that she gets, treasures it dearly.

The love that comes with fluttering butterflies, though, with blushing and kisses and making love and _romance _(with putting your heart on the line and giving your all)—this will never be hers.

And she tries, she tries really, _really_ hard (and wonders, why, wonders why she keeps trying so hard to persuade him, convince him, harder than she's ever tried for her friends) to tell him. She's just not that type of girl, she says. He must understand, right? He—he's so clever. He's a good judge of character. So why does he only see her good traits? She's a manipulative bitch, that's what she is. Sure, she does it for her friends—but she's nothing like Chizu or Sawako or those girls he's friends with … honest and sweet and nice. She just _isn't_.

And people notice that. Maybe they don't understand, maybe they don't see it—but in the end, they still feel it. That's why boys are intimidated by her and men see her as an easy way for sex.

"I'm not cute at all," Ayane states truthfully. 'Not on the inside. Not when it counts.' She doesn't add it but she thinks he hears the thoughts as much as the words.

.

She isn't surprised, not very much at least, when he insists on his opinion. It just happens that he likes her a wee bit at the moment and schoolboy-crushes like that _do_ make a little stupid. She knows that already, it's nothing new. It won't stay like this anyway. Boys are all the same. One day they'll wake up and will have a clear head again and decide that they never liked her from the beginning or that they really were little assholes all the while—and just like that, she'll be single again, resigned and disappointed and a little annoyed with herself.

Ayane won't let that happen again. Not with Kento. First of all, because they're friends now (whenever _that _happened) and friends deserve good things (which, really, isn't what Ayane would describe herself as in a romantic sense). He's also just a very good person. He's someone who takes care of broken hearts for the sake of taking care and nothing more, someone who is good-natured and funny and charming. She doesn't need this kind of gentleness. (She doesn't deserve it.)

So she smiles and rejects his antics with a shrug of the shoulders, because in a few weeks, maybe a month, he won't like her that way anymore.

Crushes come and go, especially with the fickle kind of guys like Miura Kento.

Halloween, he will admire another girl's costume at their school's Halloween party. Christmas Eve, he will give another girl a present—maybe sweets or earrings or a hug—and warm her freezing fingertips. Valentine's Day, he will ask Ayane for advice because you know, there's this girl he likes and maybe perhaps pretty please could she help him get a date with her?

Soon, everything will be the same as always. She smiles at the thought—and, no surprise, he smiles right back at her. _Stupid boy_.

.

(Still, her treacherous heart starts beating frantically when Pin asks if they go out and she doesn't like one bit of what that could imply.)

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Please take into consideration that English is not my first language :)

Feedback would be lovely!

– bells


End file.
